Operation Short Story

I have got to get my act together. My reading diet is leaving me kind of wan. It involves way too much internet ephemera–probably because my desk chair is the best chair in the house, or actually, probably because I’m a sad, reality-avoiding loafer with adult-onset ADD. In addition to that, my routine includes the New Yorker, headlines and lifestyle fluff in the New York Times, a glance or two per week at the Economist (depressing!), and roughly five pages a day of Peter Gay’s life of Freud (at this rate, I’ll be finished in one hundred years).

So my brain is rotting, plus there’s something else to feel guilty about: I am a contemptuous brat when it comes to new fiction.

It wasn’t always this way. Once upon a time, I was a starry-eyed girl with dreams! Who kept up with what was happening in the book world! Who read the Book Review every Sunday! Then, you know what happened? Jonathan Safran Foer. I fucking hate him. I took his stupid book out of the library, but I couldn’t get past page three. I kept picking it up and reading the same three pages and then, BOOM! It was like driving a car into a concrete wall. I physically could not get any further.

Then he got a million dollar advance for Extremely Whatever and Incredibly Whatever, and I didn’t even attempt that one. I read the reviews, though. I remember someone mentioning that the main character, who is eight and maybe sort of autistic, describes depression as “wearing the heavy boots,” or some such. That strikes me as:

1. inaccurate
2. unbearably precious.

To borrow a Left Hookism, it makes me want to stick knives in my eyes! And speaking of knives: John Updike liked that book. Just shove a dagger in my heart, John Updike! Okay? I thought I could trust you.

After J.S.F., I started to realize that it’s the same thing with all the young bucks. There’s no there there. White Teeth, meh. Bee Season? PUKE. And so on.

Late last year, I kept hearing about Heidi Julavits’s the Uses of Enchantment and it sounded interesting, so I went to the Strand to buy it, and it was hard to find a copy that wasn’t encrusted with some reviewer’s come. (Oops, Heidi, was that snarky? Sorry!) So I read it, and while it certainly didn’t inspire the murderous feelings I have towards Myla Goldberg, I still felt like I was missing something. All that hype, for this?

Oh, I don’t want to be like this! I want to engage with contemporary literature in a positive way. I have a goddamn MFA… when the time comes, I hope somebody will pay attention to my work. It seems greedy and uncharitable to expect that while exempting myself from reading any new writing.

So I kept stewing and stewing about all this, and then yesterday I figured it out. The answer is SHORT STORIES. The best new works of fiction that I’ve read in the last ten years have all been short stories. I can think of a bunch off the top of my head that have stayed with me:

• Rick Moody’s “Demonology.” The collection is uneven but that story is beautiful.
• “The God of Dark Laughter” by Michael Chabon. I actually can’t remember what it was about. But it made me weep.
• “Round on Both Ends and High in the Middle” by David Gates. That shit’s like a lightening bolt. Read it!
• “All Shall Love Me and Despair” by Jean Thompson, which was in one of the Best Americans. Lady writes a hot sentence.
• the George Saunders story about the male stripper and his trashy sister and cousin who have babies and their aunt (?) who dies and comes back to life, etc.
• Alice Munro! All of it!

Short stories can be perfect in a way novels usually cannot. Our book culture doesn’t really care about them, so the short story landscape is pure and free, like the Great Plains during the whole covered wagon era. Plus, they are short. That is a huge plus for me.

Yesterday I subscribed to four lit mags. That’s right, four! Pistol Whip does not fuck around. They are:

• One Story. I met Hannah Tinti once and she was sort of mean to me, but I was dumb and 21. I like the design of One Story, and it comes every three weeks. Nice!
• Zoetrope. I won’t call it Zoetrope: All-Story because it would be embarrassing… it’s that late-nineties branding feel. Ick. But they publish some good stuff.
• Tin House.
• N+1. That Benjamin Kunkel is a looker! This way I can support one of his endeavors without reading his novel, which was hyped like crazy and would inevitably disappoint me.

This is so, so, so long. Are you still alive? I hope so!

Here is your prize for reading this:

Hopefully you like dudes. It’s Benjamin Kunkel!

I’ll write more when my mags come in the mail.

by Pistol Whip | 24 February 2007 | hopes and dreams, reading | Comments